Irish Poet Kevin Higgins on Joe Higgins' impending retirement

"The Militant Tendency was, during the 1980s, the largest Trotskyist organisation in Britain and Ireland. It was feared by the establishment.  It led Labour Youth, the youth section of the Irish Labour Party; had the leadership of Liverpool City Council during the council’s struggle against the Thatcher government; and led the successful campaign against the poll tax, video footage of which is always shown during every television documentary about Margaret Thatcher’s downfall. These days it is called The Socialist Party and has many thousands of ex-members, quite a few of whom were treated shockingly by the Party’s entirely undemocratic internal apparatus. These ex-members include founding member of its Irish organisation, John Throne; TDs Joan Collins and Clare Daly; former leading member Dermot Connolly; and the author of this poem, Kevin Higgins. Kevin wrote this poem on the announcement of the impending retirement at the next General Election of Joe Higgins from the Dáil. Joe has a reputation for speaking up for people’s rights. One group on whose behalf Joe has never spoken up is the many ex-members of his own organisation whose reputations the Party has tried to destroy.

For more see here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOKAfX52Nww
and here http://dublinopinion.com/2009/11/19/john-throne-on-the-cwi-and-expulsion/"

Irish Parliament’s Last Remaining Holy Man

Speaks On His Retirement

Tonight, I remember not the few

who stuck with me through

thin and thinner, but the many who,

long term, made stone mattresses

for their own backs by abandoning

me. Those politically

disembowelled on the quiet at meetings

I know nothing about, who left us

no alternative but to mutter

behind hands

about funds misappropriated; girls taken

advantage of on sofas

that weren’t fit for purpose; or

drainpipe trousers worn

without due care and attention

            on marches for

(or against) unemployment, war

            and death.

I was too busy doing what

The Congregation for the Doctrine

of the Faith told me

to know anything about anything

bad. To advance in this Party

all you needed do was be

reliable as old wardrobes,

or ready, when the moment came,

to do the thing everyone else wanted done

            but weren’t prepared to ruin

their fingernails doing themselves.

            To lend a dank hand

deleting the necessary names.  

Their eyes filling with nostalgia

as the breadknife goes in,

and their giblets spill,

like the worst serving of meatballs

ever to fall on a plate

this side of Mulhuddart.

Because of their vast

self-indulgence, I’ll spend

my remaining days

practicing self-denial on a rock

off the Atlantic coast,

crying into the turf smoke

at all those who left me.

KEVIN HIGGINS

Kevin Higgins was born in London in 1967 to Irish parents. He grew up in Galway, Ireland but lived in London in the late 80s/early nineties when he was active in the Anti-Poll Tax movement and chairman of Enfield Against The Poll Tax. He was expelled from the Labour Party in 1991 for his anti-poll tax activities and membership of Militant. He is now co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway, Ireland.  He facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre; teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute and on the Brothers of Charity Away With Words programme. He is also Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital and the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser. 

He has published four collections of poems:  Kevin’s most recent collection of poetry, The Ghost In The Lobby, was launched at this year’s Cúirt Festival by Mick Wallace TD. His poems also feature in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014).  His poetry was recently the subject of a paper titled ‘The Case of Kevin Higgins: Or The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire’ given by David Wheatley at a symposium on satire at the University of Aberdeen; David Wheatley’s paper can be read in full here http://georgiasam.blogspot.ie/2014/05/the-case-of-kevin-higgins-or-present.html . Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews, was published by Salmon in April, 2012.  Kevin’s blog is http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/ . and has been described by Dave Lordan as “one of the funniest around” who has also called Kevin “Ireland’s sharpest satirist.”

Praise for Kevin Higgins’s poetry:

“His contribution to the development of Irish satire is indisputable…Higgins’ poems embody all of the cunning and deviousness of language as it has been manipulated by his many targets... it is clear that Kevin Higgins’ voice and the force of his poetic project are gaining in confidence and authority with each new collection.” Philip Coleman

“It is a profound compliment to the quality of Kevin’s writing that you can disagree with the content and yet find yourself still reading on and appreciating the style. You’d have to say that he is one of the lead poets of his generation in Ireland at this stage.” Clare Daly T.D.

“Comedy is part of his poetics, and what I especially like in his work is its swiftness of wit, its tone of buoyant contrarianism and jubilant disappointment”, Eamonn Grennan, The Irish Times

 “good satirical savagery”. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000

“Fluent and often as laugh-out-loud funny as Paul Howard's Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.” John McAuliffe, reviewing The Ghost in The Lobby, Irish Times August 2014